Wolfberries
by Olivia Beige
Summary: For the Round 10 of valar-morekinks, with the prompt: Ghost Lyanna: Ever since Jon can remember, Lya has always been there for him. She's there to hug him when Jon is reminded he is a bastard. She sneaks him treats when he does well in his training or studies but isn't praised like Robb is. But no one else seems to know who she is.


Jon's first vivid memory of her dated back to the day Arya was born.

He and Robb finished their lessons early. They were learning the Northern heraldry, House names and House words and House lords and soon enough, the lords' immediate families. That was the day Jon truly understood the name Snow.

Jon grew sadder as the lesson progressed until Septa Mordane rushed in to announce that Lady Stark was giving birth. Maester Luwin stopped prodding Jon to enunciate the names and darted out of the tower room. Robb stayed long enough to wordlessly hug Jon before he was scampering after the maester.

Jon aimlessly and gloomily wandered around Winterfell. Being sad was not very nice. Being sad felt cold. Not like the enveloping cold that he loved, the cold which always made Father gently tug and fuss at Jon's furs to see if he was warm enough, but the crushing cold, the cold which sometimes made Jon sneeze and weak with fever.

No one paid him much mind. They were hurrying to the Great Keep where Lady Stark was said to be screaming, and those who were not hurrying to go there were talking amongst themselves that Lady Stark was said to be screaming.

Lady Stark never screamed at Jon. She also never fussed with his furs to see if he was warm enough nor visited him when he was weak with fever. Jon understood it to be because she was not his mother. Lady Stark had not screamed for him when he was being born.

Father would not say who Jon's mother was. Jon hoped that she had not screamed too much for him.

Father had always been warm and he did all the fussing for Jon. When Jon had been very small Father used to let him perch on Father's shoulders during Jon's namedays. Jon really loved that. By that moment he had already understood that he and Robb weren't twins.

When Robb had turned five he and Jon had been playing in the yard when Lady Stark had appeared to fetch Robb. Lady Stark had greeted Robb with a warm smile and told him that he had to bathe and that there would be treats. Robb had cheered loudly and charged at Lady Stark, clutching at her skirts and dancing around. Jon had cheerfully run to Lady Stark, too, but she had drawn away her skirts from him like he had been no different from the muck in the yard.

Thinking all these made Jon sadder.

When Jon looked up from his boots he saw that he was by the stables. A lady was leaning against one of the wooden walls, smiling at one of the horses.

"What are you doing out here?" she said as Jon stared up at her. "Why aren't you at your lessons?"

The lady approached him. She had a bright smile and her grey eyes were friendly. When she took his smaller hand in hers, Jon felt the coldness of her hand.

He looked at her gentle hand then up, and up at her warm eyes, and decided that it was the enveloping sort of cold.

Haltingly, Jon told her about the heraldry lesson and about feeling sad.

* * *

She was Jon's friend.

She told him a lot of stories. Sometimes the stories helped because they turned out to be in his lessons with Maester Luwin and Robb. She also knew where to pick the best wolfberries in the glass gardens.

Father looked puzzled when Jon mentioned her.

"Do you mean Turnip, Jon?" he said.

"No, Father." Turnip was Gage the cook's daughter, of an age with Robb and Jon. Jon's friend was older, taller, but not as old as Father.

Jon had heard the mutterings from the other people in the castle: "Poor little lordling. He never knew his mother, that's why." So Jon had stopped talking about his friend.

"Why won't you tell me your name?" Jon asked her one day.

They were in one of the corridors, the wintry light slanting from the diamond paned windows and brushing the tapestry depicting King Jon Stark raising the Wolf's Den. She was the one who showed him this corridor, and it quickly became his favourite.

She handed him another blueberry cream cake. Jon's friend had a knack for sneaking unseen into the kitchens and bringing back fresh treats hours before they were to be served. Father always had first pick during meals, followed by Lady Stark. Then it was Robb's turn. When Baby Sansa had been born, she followed Robb even though she barely ate solid cakes. Now Baby Arya would follow Sansa. Jon was always last.

Jon licked the crumbs off his fingers and happily took the cake.

She laughed and rumpled his hair. "I'll tell you when you're older."

An easy silence enveloped them as they sat on the corridor and gazed at the tapestry. Jon's back was warm against a Stark banner draped on the wall behind him, and his friend had told him that hot springs coursed through the walls. She was seated cross-legged beside him, holding two more cakes.

"Father said the same to me," Jon heard himself say in a small voice, "when I asked him about my mother."

Jon's friend stopped smiling. She gazed at him with her bottom lip between her teeth.

Then she shuffled closer. Her arm was comforting around Jon's shoulders, and Jon could smell the richness of the blueberry cream cakes on her lap.

"There are some things that are not for little children," she told Jon. "Little children are still growing."

Jon hesitated. "Father said I'm growing every day. He said I'm going to grow."

"He's right." After a beat she added, "What kind of swords are you using in your lessons?"

"Wooden ones."

"Your master-at-arms won't let you use steel, yes? Because you're still growing children."

Jon considered this, and after some moments he thought he understood what she was trying to say. "Some things to know are like steel?" he ventured, and tipped back his head to look at her face.

Sometimes she strongly reminded him of Father.

She was smiling now. "That's right. You are such a smart darling."

Her hand that was attached to the arm around Jon's shoulders went to the side of Jon's head. She brought his head very close and then she was kissing him on the forehead, like he had seen Lady Stark do to Robb countless times. For a moment the dark fall of hair of Jon's friend shielded him from the world, from the cold light streaming from the windows and from Jon's favourite tapestry of King Jon Stark. For a moment during her kiss everything was dark and warm and oddly safe that Jon wished, earnestly and hopelessly, that she were his mother instead.

* * *

When Jon was eight Lord Tully sent a chest of gifts for Bran's first nameday. Lord Tully also had gifts for his other grandchildren, and since Jon was not Lady Stark's child Jon had not received a gift.

Lady Stark's brother Edmure Tully had arrived with a small party. They told Robb that he made them proud, and then they would send Jon polite and fleeting smiles. It was all because of the heraldry, Jon knew it. It was because Jon was Father's bastard boy of an age with Robb the heir.

But Robb wanted Jon by his side throughout the visit. He clutched at Jon's arm and said that Jon need not worry: they would share the toys. Jon loved him for that.

So Jon stuck by Robb, like he always did. Sometimes one of the Tully party asked Robb questions about his lessons to see how he was doing.

Maester Luwin taught Jon and Robb details before he taught them the significance of the details. Jon thought of those lessons as flakes of snow details piling and piling and piling until there was a snowball. Or until there was Winterfell.

One late morning Ser Edmure asked Robb about Aegon V.

Robb was better at details, but Jon was better at significance.

"That's why Aegon V was popular with the smallfolk," Jon muttered to Robb. "Aegon V made laws for smallfolk rights because of spending time with them. The nobles didn't like the laws."

Ser Edmure was not keen on Jon interrupting but he was pleased with Robb's answer. Ser Edmure told Lady Stark so, and Lady Stark let Robb have another berry tart at lunch.

That made Jon droop. Robb might share his toys with Jon and love Jon well, like Jon loved him, but Robb still had many new toys and people even from outside Winterfell praised him at lessons.

To cheer him up his friend suggested that they play with Jon's toys. She sat on the carved chair by the ironwood table and watched as Jon knelt on the fur rug. He opened the chest with all the toys he owned and carefully laid them on the rug.

Most of them were from Father and sometimes from Uncle Benjen. As he looked at them Jon decided that they were enough.

He also decided something else.

Jon sat by his friend's feet, by now comfortable with her and secure in the knowledge that she would never turn him away, and leaned against her skirts. He loved the rasp of the crushed grey velvet near the hem, and the white brocade with pearls.

"This is Edrick the Snowy Horse," Jon said of the polished wooden horse which he had always referred to as the white horse.

Of the other horse, the jet black one with inlaid copper, he said, "This is Cregan the Black Horse." He set it beside Edrick the Snowy Horse for the two horses were to have adventures.

On and on he named his toys: Torrhen the Rattle, Arrana the Boat, Berena the Ship, Artos the Knight, Barthogan the Ceramic Horse amongst them. They were his toys, and names were important. These names, Jon could give, Jon could wield.

His friend made approving noises for each name, and played with Jon's toys for a bit.

"I don't know what to call you," Jon shyly told her.

She smiled down at him, rumpling his hair. "When you're older. But now, what do you want to call me?"

Jon peered up at his friend and wondered what he should call her. She'd always been His Friend in his head. But the names he'd given his toys were from long-ago Starks. And she was his friend, a person, not a wooden horse or a boat.

"You're so quiet I can never hear you approach," Jon mused out loud. "And you can sneak in the kitchens. And sneak everywhere. And I don't know your name. No one knows."

She laughed. It was a loud and open laugh, a kind laugh. She spread her legs under her skirts as a man would sit, so that she could lean her elbow on her other thigh whilst keeping her other leg still for Jon to continue leaning on. And then she was leaning down and rumpling his hair again and pinching his cheek.

"So which is it, lad? What will you call me?"

Jon clutched at her skirts and peered up at her. "Ghost."

* * *

Ghost was gracious with Jon's decision. She had laughed out loud like it was the most amusing thing.

Jon couldn't understand how she managed to be sneaky because what he had seen of Ghost looked anything but quiet.

Ghost's laugh was always loud and wolfish, not at all like the highborn ladies that Jon had met during Ser Edmure's visit and during Father's visits to the bannermen. Not at all like Lady Stark's. And Jon suspected that Ghost was not of the smallfolk, because Ghost's gown looked really costly.

Although she always wore the same gown, so perhaps she had lost coins.

Whenever he and Ghost played by King Jon Stark's tapestry, Ghost's strides were wide and brusque, her boots boldly clacking on the stones. Ghost liked to run as well.

Sometimes Ghost said unkind things about some people. Jon didn't know most of those people, but he recognised some names. Ghost could be swift with her words, especially her sharp and unkind words. Rash, Jon thought. Along with the fact that Ghost could be impatient, too.

If Ghost had been a toddler, Jon would have called her a toddling terror like Arya.

Ghost always liked to see what's by the hot springs, or what's hanging on a branch, or what's growing in the glass gardens, or what would happen when the rabid puppy in the kennels met the mad pony in the stables. Jon always had to caution her. That was all right for Jon used to caution Robb a lot.

When Jon was ten, shortly before Father's thirtieth nameday, it struck him that it had been silly to wish that Ghost were his mother. Ghost was only a young lady, after all. Sometimes she even reminded Jon of little Arya who was a toddling terror but liked Jon a lot. It seemed as if Ghost always looked the same, a young lady only a handful of years older than Jon's ten years. And Jon was nearly of height with her shoulders.

"He likes strawberry to drink," Ghost advised Jon on Father's nameday gift. "The old gods know why. But crush the strawberries to pulp, then put some dried wolfberries in it. He'd love that."

Jon wrinkled his nose. He saw that Ghost was also wrinkling her nose, but she was smiling, too, her eyes lost in the distance.

"It's an awful flavour, too sweet, by the old gods! But it's his dark secret." Ghost cackled.

Ghost sneaked around a lot and so she must have heard a lot of things. Jon decided to follow her advice.

He and Ghost worked on the strawberries in the kitchen yard as the rest of Winterfell bustled about to prepare for the coming bannermen. All nameday feasts were special, but this one was supposed to be more special, Jon had heard. Of his siblings, Father was a second son and the first to reach thirty. Uncle Brandon and Aunt Lyanna would never be thirty.

After they had poured the thick strawberry drink in an iron and copper goblet, Ghost instructed Jon to add thirty pieces of dried wolfberries.

Jon decided to give Father the goblet as soon as it was prepared. Jon did not wait for the feast, where everything would be noisy and a lot would be going on. He asked to enter Father's study.

When he saw the drink Father's face went through a variety of expressions until it froze on a distant one as he stared at Jon's face. Jon had Father's face, and Father's grey eyes and dark hair.

Then a wide smile gently swept on Father's long solemn face. It strongly reminded Jon of Ghost's smiles which were often wide and sometimes, wildly gleeful.

"My sincerest thanks, Jon," said Father. "Why don't you sit with me?"

Jon gladly sat by Father as Father answered letters. Father shared the drink with him. This was enough. This was all that mattered today, on Father's nameday. Even when Jon was last in picking choice meat or treats later during the feast, spending alone time with Father was all that mattered.

Jon treasured these moments the most, along with his secret careful pride of looking very much like Father as he had heard people say countless times. He and Baby Arya were the only ones who took after Father.

The wind outside was cold as Jon skipped out of the Great Keep, but it was the enveloping cold, the best kind of cold. It was too great a day. It felt like nothing could make Jon sad today, he thought as he looked for Ghost.

He found her chasing birds near the crypts.

Ghost saw him and beckoned him over. Jon cheerfully ran towards her.

When Jon was near enough Ghost suddenly bent forward, and swiftly scooped up Jon. Jon gasped out, clutching hard at her deceptively delicate arms. Ghost's laughter was nearly a howl. Jon started laughing, too.

"You were right about the drink," Jon giggled. He was airborne. He felt like he was one with the dusting of falling snow.

"Of course I am," Ghost asserted.

Then Ghost set him down and handed him wolfberries. She always gave him treats between meals, and Ghost always knew how to pick the best wolfberries for Jon.

"Let us visit the godswood," said Ghost as she took his hand.

Jon bit into a wolfberry and nodded, beaming up at her. He huddled closer to her. Ghost might not be his mother because Ghost was only a girl but she was his friend. Jon always felt an enveloping cold whenever he was with her, the best kind of cold, and that was all that mattered.

 _fin_


End file.
